Pre-school children who visit the zoo and have access to books and other
cultural activities have more developed brains as teenagers, scientists said
yesterday.

But no such correlation was found in children who received similar
intellectual stimulation at the age of eight. This reinforced the theory
that there is a crucial period of cognitive development early in a child’s
life.

Scientists from the University of Philadelphia followed 64 children for the
first 20 years of their lives. At the ages of four and eight, the children
were visited in their homes and each was assigned a score relating to the